


A House Is Not a Home

by Destina



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Episode Tag, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-07-01
Updated: 2005-07-01
Packaged: 2018-04-03 23:30:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4118668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Destina/pseuds/Destina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack and Daniel say goodbye to Jack's house, and to each other - at least for now - as Daniel heads for Atlantis.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A House Is Not a Home

**Author's Note:**

> Episode tag of sorts for Avalon, part 1. Written in 2005; posted to AO3 in June 2015.

The house wasn't his anymore, technically, but Jack couldn't stop wandering through it on a continual loop. He told himself he was looking for things left behind -- old cans of shaving cream, stray bullets left in kitchen drawers, or the odd dead plant leaf here and there, scattered over the carpet. It wasn't true, though. The house still had resonance for him, and disengaging it from his life was proving to be more difficult than he'd imagined when he'd first put it on the market.

The realtor's papers were scattered over the rectangular space where the couch used to be. Nice couch; boring, kind of predictable, but very comfortable for Sunday naps. Gone now, with all the rest of his stuff. This was where he'd written mission reports, watched hockey, recuperated from the endless string of injuries right before his promotion. Being a general had proved to be pretty much what he'd hoped and feared, and that was saying quite a bit, considering how low his expectations had been. 

And now he was going to do it all over again, times ten. He was a little bit cracked in the head, that was for sure. Team broken apart: check. SGC handed over to capable hands: check. New job with triple the stress: check. Daniel, on his way to Atlantis: imminent. 

Slowly, he eased himself down on the floor and began collecting the papers into a more composed heap. Outside, the sun gleamed off the sparkling-clean windows. It took an act of god, or a pushy realtor, to get the windows cleaned. Generals don't do windows, he'd told Carter, and she'd smirked at him and told him that colonels don't, either. But it was a lie, because he'd seen her house, and it was as clean as a whistle. No surprise for someone who alphabetized her bookshelves. 

Back to the wall, he closed his eyes. The house seemed smaller without his life crammed into it. 

"Hellooo?" The echo in the empty space made Jack cringe. "Jack?"

"In here," he called, as Daniel let himself in and then slammed the front door shut. Quite the contrast from the old days, when he was so cautious in Jack's space. When had that changed? Hard to say. Daniel had been letting himself in for years. It barely gave him pause, anymore - except for now, when he was on the verge of squeezing himself out of this cocoon, and he felt alien here even without visitors. He turned his head to watch Daniel round the corner and thump down the stairs, a six-pack of beer in his hand. "Nice of you to bring refreshments."

"We're celebrating, right?" Daniel settled down on the floor near Jack, right where the chair used to be - just like the thing was still there. He frowned down at the carpet and began picking together a fuzzball, from around the grooves where the feet of the sofa had bent back the fibers. "You planning to vacuum this?"

"You planning to clean the rest of my house as a going-away present?"

"No," Daniel said, and dropped the fuzzball. 

Jack pointed at the beer. "Give," he said, eloquent as always in his demands, and with a raised eyebrow, Daniel handed him a bottle. "This had better be a twist-top," Jack added. 

"That's what countertops are for."

Jack snorted, wrapped his shirt around the cap and twisted until it came off with a satisfying hiss. Daniel raised his bottle. "To the journey ahead, for both of us."

Jack wagged the bottom of his bottle toward Daniel's until they clunked together. "No little pearls of wisdom about how it's not the destination? Because I've got to tell you, for me, it's all about the destination."

"Big shock there," Daniel said, and upended his bottle, draining it in one long gulp. Jack stared at him. 

"Thirsty?" he asked, as Daniel reached for another. 

Same tiny smile, but no response, as Daniel opened the second bottle. Instead, he pointed to the papers and said, "Need a pen?"

"Got one, thanks. Free, too. Amazing, the perks you get from a realtor." In point of fact, he wasn't too sure where he'd left it, but it was somewhere in the house. Maybe in the bathroom. Such things often defied logic. 

Daniel flopped back on the rug and stretched his legs out, resting the bottle on the carpet. One at a time, he kicked off his shoes. "So, you have a new house lined up in DC?"

"Not really, no. I was thinking of looking in Virginia."

"Expensive there."

"Where is it not expensive?"

"Real estate's cheap in the Pegasus Galaxy," Daniel said softly. 

"Not my preferred neighborhood," Jack said. His days of traveling the galaxy were mostly over, and he was okay with it. Mostly. Daniel knew that, too, which made the question a little odd. It was Daniel who'd been prodding, poking, and pleading for months to get on the next Atlantis expedition team, and when he'd finally said yes, Daniel had been joyful - for about two seconds, before that expression changed, subtly, to something Jack thought he might recognize. 

Regret. 

Daniel had that same expression now, and he turned his face away, as if aware Jack was reading him too closely. "You going to miss this house?"

"I already do." There had been some extraordinary times in that house, and a number of things Jack would just as soon forget. He had a flash of sitting in the living room in the dark, after his team had reluctantly gone home, with Ancient verbs swirling like plague in the back of his brain. 

Jack set his beer down and looked out the window. Sunlight streamed intermittently through the glass, replaced by clouded shadows every few seconds. "Nice of you to show up after all the moving is done."

"I have impeccable timing," Daniel said. He still wasn't looking at Jack. 

_Not so much,_ Jack thought. A thousand jokes suggested themselves, but he didn't have the heart to bother. Instead he looked at Daniel, which was okay because Daniel wasn't looking back, and when had that changed, too? Probably around the time Jack had announced he was leaving, which he hadn't done just because he knew Daniel wanted to go, but there was a connection there. Daniel knew. He'd probably always known. 

Now Daniel had a scruffy growth of reddish-brown beard that made him look like he'd been marooned offworld for weeks without a razor; just another of the many changes in the last few weeks. There was a stillness about Daniel, now -- not at work, but here, where it was only the two of them. All the excitement seemed to have drained from him, and he was no longer restless. His body was relaxed. Waiting.

Hadn't they _all_ been waiting? Waiting for the galaxy to be safe again, so they could sleep through the night without the back-of-the-mind fear that the pager would go off and the Earth would be invaded. Waiting for some kind of normalcy in their lives again. Waiting for a time when they could have dreams again, instead of just goals and missions. 

Waiting for each other to choose. 

Daniel turned his direct gaze on Jack, without speaking - god, Jack was going to miss arguing with Daniel; sometimes it was the chief purpose to his day, the reason he actually got out of bed in the morning - and tapped his fingers on the side of the beer bottle. Jack could hear him thinking: _stay, or go?_

Better not to let that train of thought get too far. They had already chosen their respective paths, for now. 

He collected the beer bottle first, then the glasses. Just a gentle tug and they slid from Daniel's nose. Jack folded them and placed them close to the wall, where they wouldn't get crushed. Daniel sat up, facing him; Jack pushed him back to the floor and lowered himself alongside Daniel's body. With one hand, he undid the buttons on Daniel's shirt one at a time, until he was able to push Daniel's shirt open and smooth his palm over Daniel's chest. Daniel's eyes drifted closed, and he sighed out a breath that might have been Jack's name. He drew his hand down, over Daniel's belly, through the patch of coarse hair below his naval, and began to work the button of his fly. Daniel caught his wrist and pulled, and Jack went with it, right into Daniel's arms, so that his lips and Daniel's were touching. 

"We've wasted a lot of time," Daniel said, against his lips, a vibrating hum on the edge of a smile. 

Jack didn't really have an answer for that, because none of it had been wasted, so instead he kissed Daniel, kissed him like it was the beginning again, before he'd had a chance to compare the Daniel of his fantasies with the flesh and blood version. Real Daniel was a little quicker to open his lips, to invite Jack in, to touch Jack's tongue with his own in a way that made Jack harder than diamonds. He could just taste the tinge of regret on Daniel's soft lips, deeper than the taste of joy. _You could stay_ , he wanted to say, but he didn't, because it wouldn't make any difference. 

Daniel looked at Jack from beneath lowered eyelids, then lifted his hips so Jack could yank down the jeans. No briefs. Sneaky bastard. Jack chuckled, more than a little amused, as Daniel tugged his jeans up toward him with two fingers and rooted around in the pocket. "You came prepared, I see," he said, and turned his attention to Daniel's erection, full and hard, curving up toward his belly. 

"I've learned a lot from you," Daniel said. He dropped the tube on the floor next to Jack's left hand. Jack bent his head and kissed the hollow of Daniel's throat. What had Daniel learned from him? Maybe the art of concealment, or the art of denial, where his feelings were concerned. Or maybe he'd known those things all along. Neither were good traits. Not for Daniel. 

When he took Daniel's cock into his mouth, Daniel arched off the floor into his hands and said his name, so sharply - _"Jack!"_ \- like pain was driving the sound. He used his hands to push Daniel back down to earth, to hold him; he used his mouth to force Daniel to say his name again, and again, until he lost the breath to say it and could only make ragged, gasping noises, broken bits of sound that might have been Jack's name, or might have been other words, words Jack was deaf to. 

He wanted to watch almost as much as he wanted to feel; Daniel's smooth skin, coarse hair; Daniel's throat, straining with his effort to hold back. Jack didn't want him to hold back. He wanted everything, now, now, there was no more time, and he pushed Daniel's legs apart to touch him there, licking and biting and sucking until Daniel gave a low cry, wrenched out of him, like skin sliding over broken glass. 

Daniel's taste was salt-bitter, like tears. 

Jack pressed a kiss to the inside of Daniel's thigh, and to his softening cock, and then began shedding his own clothes. Daniel watched him, heavy breaths lifting his chest, his arms spread out to the side, hands open and palms up. Finally, he had stilled again, but Jack could see thought moving inside him, opening him, making way for possibility. 

Too late, maybe. Maybe not. This wasn't about possibility. 

When he turned Daniel on his stomach and pressed his lips to Daniel's shoulder, Daniel bucked against him, shuddering. The force of his wanting became heat against Jack's skin as he penetrated Daniel slowly, slick and hard, holding back just so he could hear Daniel's impatient commands - _faster, now, fuck me, Jack, hurry,_ and a hundred other orders delivered by low moans. He pushed Daniel's arms up, stretched them out until he could cover Daniel's hands with his own, pull his fingers from the clutch against the carpet and smooth them out, lace them into his own. Slowly, he thrust into him, a thrust and a press of a kiss against Daniel's spine, or the nape of his neck, following the shivers that guided him over Daniel's body. 

It didn't take long; he'd known before he entered Daniel that there was no chance he'd last, fucking him slow. More regrets, but smaller ones, on the cosmic scale. Daniel's pulse beat beneath his lips, triple-speed when Jack came inside him, then slower, and still slower, until Jack finally released his hands and withdrew. He rolled away from Daniel, still touching him, unable to stop. 

He dozed for a while in the patchy sunlight, with Daniel snoring lightly next to him, and woke sticky and a little bit linty. Daniel was watching him, head pillowed on his arm, smiling in a way that was guaranteed to make Jack want him again. That was nothing new. "Don't suppose you have any towels in the house," Daniel said. 

"I should have vacuumed," Jack answered, picking lint off his belly. Daniel snorted with laughter and rolled over, reaching for his jeans. Jack looked at the ceiling, where there was nothing but a blank white space, nothing written there, nothing to mark the house as his own. "When does the Daedelus leave?"

"Another couple of weeks," Daniel said. Zip, rustle, and the snick of glasses being unfolded. "They need to fully provision, and obtain some of the items the Atlantis folks requested."

"Personal items?" Jack said. He made no move toward his own clothing, but Daniel was ahead of him; he draped Jack's shirt neatly over his chest.

"Among other things."

Jack sat up and tugged on his shirt. Not like anyone else would be sniffing him anytime soon, but he could hear the hotel shower calling to him. Daniel was still sprawled on the floor, shirtless and leaning up on one elbow, watching him as Jack tugged on his jeans. "Lots of work to do on Atlantis." 

"It's a one year tour," Daniel answered, going straight to the question that hadn't been asked. 

"You planning to make a career out of studying that place?" Jack asked, maybe too casually. considering that they'd just fucked like a couple of teenagers who had their whole lives stretched out in front of them. Long life was not a luxury Jack took for granted anymore. 

"Only if you're planning to buy another house." Daniel stretched out a hand to touch Jack's face, to draw him closer; his kiss was not about possibility, but maybe it wasn't about regret, either, and Jack could live with that.


End file.
